How is your attendance at TLM?
  • ghmus7
    Posts: 1,478
    Well folks, I can report that the Holy Fathers' moto is having precisely the opposite effect in my area. The recent EF masses have practically doubled in attendance. And I think that new people are coming, to see what thus terrible thing is that the pope wants to expunge. I would like to hear of other experiences.
    Thanked by 2Jani tomjaw
  • TCJ
    Posts: 985
    Seems ours is growing still. I think that will increase as the diocese is becoming unreasonable about "mandates" again.
  • Ours is still growing. We've permission from our bishop to begin looking for a place to purchase or build on our own.
  • CatherineS
    Posts: 690
    Ours seems consistent. I've heard the bishop has set up two other locations to provide access to the TLM for people in different areas of the (sprawling) city, but I think that was in the works long before the motu proprio. The original location is most convenient for me in any case.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,764
    We are up around 25% on Sundays and make up 54% of the Sunday Mass attendance, and 74% of the weekday Mass attendance.
  • OraLabora
    Posts: 218
    Our diocese doesn’t have one so attendance is zero. And demand for it pretty close to that. There is so much nasty baggage attached to the 1950s Québec Church that anything that can be associated with Catholicism of that era gives people the hives.

    Ora
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,448
    Very different from Ontario, I see. Only three venues in the whole of Quebec, each in a different diocese.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,764
    "And demand for it pretty close to that. " How can you have demand for something that is unknown to most Catholics. Of course we will see no demand for chant, Latin etc. if people have not been educated that they are intrinsic parts of the Roman Mass.

    Thanks to Covid we have gained 25%, most of whom did not know about the TLM, but came because they wanted to go to Mass without all the Covid fuss. Many of them do not intend to return to the N.O., they have discovered something new and it has depend their faith.
    Thanked by 2CCooze GregoryWeber
  • I agree with Tom that part of the problem is exposure.

    I didn't have any particular axe to grind with the N.O. until I was in my late 20's. I was disgusted by the behavior of some priests in the sanctuary that I'd encountered (I've detailed this elsewhere on the forum) and eventually sought respite in a TLM community. This happened, largely, because I had nowhere else to turn.

    At the time, I would have been perfectly happy with a reverent N.O. Mass, which we had at one point. I had one pastor who wore his cassock, said Mass versus Deum, and had a communion rail reinstalled which he encouraged people to use, and he asked me to chant (my first exposure to chant). All of these things thrilled me because they were in accord with my sensus fidelium. It was only when things got really bad after his departure that I sought retreat in a TLM community, being left with nowhere else to turn.

    Upon first attending, it was an absolute revelation to me—I had no idea Mass could be so beautiful, reverent, mysterious, and more to the point: that there were whole communities of people who worshipped together who took their faith as seriously as I took mine. It was seeing an hour-long line into the confessional week after week before Mass that impressed me most.

    But I also remember feeling very angry; very angry indeed... with that very first low Mass on a Saturday and hour away from home, I realized just what had been kept hidden from me my whole life. I was heart-broken that I went through all my formative years never having attended a single TLM. I was angry that chant had been hidden from me. That I was 25 before I was given my first opportunity to kneel at a rail. And on, and on, and on...

    None of these revelations or feelings would have come to be if: a.) I hadn't been driven to it by truly awful N.O. liturgies, and b.) had it not been offered and accessible. People just don't know what they don't know, you know?

    But now I cannot un-know all of the things I've learned and witnessed. They are burned into the ver fibre of my soul. What I learned from my months of attending TLM absolutely informs everything I do now in my current parish position (at a N.O. parish).

    Similarly, my choir has now been tasked with singing 3? solemn TLM's now, for special occasions and it has been a revelation for all of them as well. Now they understand why I'm steering them the direction that I am, and they are all sympathetic to it as a result.
  • OraLabora:
    There is so much nasty baggage attached to the 1950s Québec Church that anything that can be associated with Catholicism of that era gives people the hives.


    Who attached the baggage?

    I don't want to veer too far away from music, but for an outsider, the situation in Quebec (and Ireland) is mystifying. What causes a people to give up a major piece of their culture?
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,061
    A very heavy hand, overplayed.
    Thanked by 2CCooze OraLabora
  • francis
    Posts: 10,772
    Serviam

    I went through the same thing as you but into my 50s. I literally wept when I realized how I and my family had been robbed.
    Thanked by 2ServiamScores CCooze
  • The TLM these days has an intentional community composed of those who take worship seriously. When it was just cultural, a badge of membership, in many cases it was no more (and no less) significant than other forms of 'patriotism' like adherence to a football team.
    Thanked by 3Liam OraLabora CharlesW
  • Who attached the baggage?

    I don't want to veer too far away from music, but for an outsider, the situation in Quebec (and Ireland) is mystifying. What causes a people to give up a major piece of their culture?


    A local Church flirting with Jansenism, a heavily clericalist clergy that, as said, overplayed its hand, and interference in the affairs of state in a manner that allowed Quebecers to remain poor and uneducated, which in turned allowed exploitation by the Big Bad Englishman (in the eyes of the uneducated and dirt poor; in reality they were no bigger, and no badder, than anyone else, but were -rather culturally insensitive- economic opportunists).

    The people who most remember that era, are the people least likely to want Latin, the TLM, etc.

    Our choirmaster's wife recalled to me when as a child she went to confession with her father. She heard her father bellow to the priest "you can stuff your absolution...". He had asked permission to use NFP as their family dirt poor and could not afford another child.

    It is not the only such case. In another, a woman went to confession. The priest asked "are you pregnant"? She replied no. Then he asked "are you nursing"? She replied no. He said "then I cannot give you absolution". She replied "you can stuff your absolution where the sun don't shine, I've been widowed since 3 years".

    NOBODY here wants to go back to that, and alas, the TLM etc. sort of brings back those memories for many folks. That said, our abbey church was filled to capacity most Sundays until the pandemic. Mass is OF but with the Gregorian Latin/Greek propers and ordinary, with nicely done French plainchant for the rest. And our schola managed to keep going by providing the music at a different OF Mass one Sunday per month, in addition to funerals, parish events, and the odd recital ("Gregorian Chant's Greatest Hits"). So there is demand for good liturgy. Just not the TLM.

    Very different from Ontario, I see. Only three venues in the whole of Quebec, each in a different diocese.


    And one of those venues is a remote backwater, a good 100 km from Sherbrooke, and centred on one large extended family in a parish where the OF and EF sides hardly acknowledge the other exists... the prime target audience of the Pope's recent motu proprio.

    I agree with Tom that part of the problem is exposure.


    It isn't really, in this area. Most nominal Catholics have left the Church by now. The remainder are an "intentional community" to borrow from a_f_hawkins. But they are mostly older people, children of Vatican II, who remember the old ways either directly or through their parents. They are intentional, but have no intentions for the TLM. It's just part of our cultural baggage and history.

    Most younger Quebecers simply do not care about the Church. Some grandparents tried to catechize them, but it hasn't much stuck.

    I think Ireland had a very similar experience.

    Ora
    Thanked by 3a_f_hawkins Liam Elmar
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,968
    I have been to NO masses that were so bad I either left, or put in earplugs. One of my students was shocked and exclaimed, "you are wearing earplugs!" I did that often. I thought the TLM was preferable to the bad NO masses I witnessed, but had nothing against NO masses done well. Being Byzantine I always had an escape if things got really bad.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,772
    I went through many earplug NOs in my day too Charles
    Thanked by 1CharlesW
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,764
    A local Church flirting with Jansenism, a heavily clericalist clergy that, as said, overplayed its hand, and interference in the affairs of state in a manner
    This happened in France and the TLM is now growing, in one diocese 20% of Sunday Mass attendance is TLM. Jansenism comes from the people not the Church, some people seem to like it. As for clericalism that seems to be a problem of the modern Church as Pope Francis keeps telling us. Of course a priest telling people 'go sin no more' is not clericalism, but the Jews rejected Christ to his face when he told them to go 'sin no more' so it is not surprising that priests receive the same treatment.
    allowed Quebecers to remain poor and uneducated
    I do find it amusing that the organisation that has done the most to help educate the poor, and deliver people from poverty is accused of the opposite, but I suppose it is easy to create a straw man and blame all your self imposed problems on it rather than take personal responsibility.
    The people who most remember that era, are the people least likely to want Latin, the TLM, etc.
    A small minority across the world reject the Faith of our Fathers and wish to follow the prince of the world, rather than Christ the King. It was always thus, this is not new and we can always tell when people are on the wrong path... 'by their fruits you will know them'.
    a woman went to confession...
    What goes on in the confessional is private, and is not for public consumption. I do find it worrying that people believe they can have a contraceptive mentality and still be Catholic. I also find it bizarre that people are going to confession and are rejecting absolution... that is the road to hell.
    So there is demand for good liturgy.
    We all know this, as long as we ignore the vocal minority. I am interested, how is your 'reverent' N.O. Mass any different from the TLM, in the case that the congregation is self selecting and not representative of the nominal Catholic of any diocese?
    and centred on one large extended family in a parish where the OF and EF sides hardly acknowledge the other exists...
    There is nothing wrong with an extended family living in a close knit geographical area and attending the Mass together, this is by and large the case for the last 2000 years of Church history. I can well understand a decreasing N.O. community that happily embraced a contraceptive mentality being rather put out seeing a family reject the prince of this world and his lies and being truly open to life. I have nine children, and some people are really put out when they see us.

    Ireland's problem was they expected the Church to solve their worldly problems, during a time of political and social upheaval. The Church is made up of men and women and we are all fallible. To blame the Church is an easy thing to do, and some of its members have behaved badly, but it is very unjust to all those members of the Church that did their best, kept the Faith, and passed it on. We must not forget this Faithful remnant, are also members of the Church.

    So all these nominal Catholics in Ireland that cast blame at the Church, can we for one moment look at what they did in the privacy of the ballot box, who did they vote for? They have voted for politicians that follow a political idea that has failed and brought poverty and oppressed the real poor wherever it has been tried. I am sure that these politicians are delighted that their personal enemy the Church is blamed rather than their political ideology.
  • As a convert, I belong to a faith that every day offers me plentiful opportunities to be disappointed, scandalized, annoyed, shocked, rejected, horrified, bored, unappreciated, etc. etc. I thought that was a feature, not a bug. ;)
  • francis
    Posts: 10,772
    “Take up your ideal way of life and follow me...” the “me” in that religion is the prince of darkness.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,198
    The unspecific story about the widow going to confession and being scolded because she wasn't pregnant or nursing sounds like someone's idea of a joke.

    But the secularization of Quebec institutions and society in the 1960s was a real event, supported by factions within the Church. Here are a couple of articles about Quebec's "Quiet Revolution" :
    https://catholicexchange.com/quebecs-quiet-revolution
    https://catholiccommons.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/the-quiet-revolution-and-the-church/
    https://www.umanitoba.ca/colleges/st_pauls/ccha/Back Issues/CCHA1996/Seljak.pdf
    Thanked by 2tomjaw madorganist
  • I have never lived in Ireland, but in London in the 50's and 60's I knew many 'refugees'. And that was just those who still clung to their faith.
  • GambaGamba
    Posts: 546
    And what came before the Quiet Revolution:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_Noirceur

    My grandparents were Quebecois and lived through all that. My grandmother, one of a family of 13, had been sent off to a convent very young to ease the family’s financial burdens. That wasn’t her vocation, and somehow my grandfather managed to attract her attention while she was still a postulant, and she left, to have her own family of 8. They came to the States in ‘61 to get out of the crushing poverty, familial alcoholism, and general despair.

    Of those 8 kids of my father’s generation, all baptized and confirmed, 1 remains nominally Catholic as far as I know, but divorced and remarried outside the Church and quit going to Mass. The rest have ceased any sort of religious activity or become evangelical. This despite my grandmother going to daily Mass her whole life, speaking freely and joyfully about her faith, and putting all the kids through CCD and most in parochial schools. One grandchild of the 25 or so in my generation has had a Catholic wedding.

    My aunts and uncles all fondly remember the various devotions and folk piety of those days, but bitterly castigate the clergy and religious they remember from that period.

  • Liam
    Posts: 5,061
    "The unspecific story about the widow going to confession and being scolded because she wasn't pregnant or nursing sounds like someone's idea of a joke."

    I can certainly attest second hand (that is, being directly told by women who had been in confession) to actual stories adjacent to that, as one might say today.

    The attempts to fisk historical realities say more about those who feel a need to fisk than the realities.

    PS: A penitent is under no canonical nor moral obligation of secrecy concerning the penitent's confession as such. (The priest is, and anyone assisting in interpretation, and anyone overhearing the confession is, but not the penitent herself.)
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,198
    I keep some reserve about anonymous stories, as FOAF tales are so common on the net, and I have an opinion that excessive accusation is a prevailing fault in our times.
    Thanked by 2tomjaw Jeffrey Quick
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,061
    Well, not sure what you mean by "our times" but the times I was talking about are beyond a generation ago. My mother's repulsion at falsehoods comes immediately to mind, a similar tenor to that of the dearest friends I am thinking of. Quite the contrary. Excessive accusation may be enabled by social media these days, but it's on the heels of generations of excessive deference to collars.
    Thanked by 2a_f_hawkins chonak
  • CCoozeCCooze
    Posts: 1,259
    The rest have ceased any sort of religious activity or become evangelical. This despite my grandmother going to daily Mass her whole life, speaking freely and joyfully about her faith, and putting all the kids through CCD and most in parochial schools.

    That sounds exactly like my mother's family. Except that 1 of her sisters returned to the Church. My own mom had left for a time, but my Methodist-raised father brought her and all of their kids at the time [back] into the Church.
    Her other sisters are agnostic/atheist, at best, and I'm not sure her brother was practicing anything before he died. My maternal grandfather was not Catholic, and my mom and her siblings weren't supposed to talk about faith at home, around him.
    They weren't Canadian, it was simply a product of the time and age and sad decline of the Church in America in the 60s and 70s.
  • @Chonak

    The unspecific story about the widow going to confession and being scolded because she wasn't pregnant or nursing sounds like someone's idea of a joke.


    It was actually quoted in a book about the priesthood that I borrowed from the abbey's library when I worked there. I forget the details of the book though, it was a couple of years ago.

    @Tomjaw

    I do find it amusing that the organisation that has done the most to help educate the poor, and deliver people from poverty is accused of the opposite, but I suppose it is easy to create a straw man and blame all your self imposed problems on it rather than take personal responsibility.


    Not really. The clergy's plan to overcome the anglo menace was through a high birth rate. Ironically, this kept Francophone Quebecers dirt poor and made them ripe for exploitation by the anglos. I think you'd have to study the history of this era in Québec to really understand. The Church here destroyed itself by placing inhuman burdens on the population. The revolt and wholesale abandonment of the faith didn't just drop out of the air or materialize because Quebecers were more hedonist than anyone else. Fact is, they couldn't afford to be hedonist. They just wanted normal Protestant-sized families they could afford to bring up, and afford to educate, rather than the 10+ kids that the Church foisted upon them.

    Ora

    Thanked by 2Gamba Elmar
  • IdeK
    Posts: 87
    Actually I had a colleague from Quebec a few years ago. He told me stories about his grandmother that were quite similar to those already told, except the humiliation happened in public. I don't see any contraceptive mentality in not being pregnant of your 12th child one year after the birth of the 11th.

    The biggest problem of Quebec and Ireland was confusion between politics, and specifically the defense of the people's identity against "the English", and religion. You should add a big dose of sex child abuse to each of the situations.

    It is quite different from France, contrarily to what has been said. The fact is France was de-christianized way before Quebec and Ireland : before the French Revolution, Mass weekly attendance in Paris had already dropped to ca. 20%. The French Revolution didn't help, no more than the development of Communism in the second half of the 19th century. As it happens, France was already considered as a "Land for Missions" by the end of World War II. You could easily find families with no practicing Catholic since 1800 in France - the last baptism and/or religious funeral might have happened

    As far as the development of the TLM is concerned, I'm afraid the case of the Versailles diocese is very special, even quite an exception. Yes, some 20% of the Mass-goers are TLM. But Versailles is really not France : it is just, to be honest, a very special part of the well-off suburbs of Paris, where people who like the TLM tend to settle because there are all the trad schools and so on they need, and can easily socialize with each other. You can know most of these people by the way they dress and look.

    On the other part, the overall number of TLM goers is not that high in France. Several dioceses do not have any TLM at all ; most have only one, with only a few dozen people attending.

    I've recently read the number of about 60 000 TLM-goers in France, including some 35000 for the SSPX. The number of Mass-goers in France is probably between 1 and 2.5 million people (between 1,5 and 4% of the global population according to polls).

    Even though lots of French rad-trads dream of the day when NOM-goers will be overnumbered, that's not going to happen anytime soon. But it's fun to hear them because they sound so much like the Communist revolutionaries they loathe ("Quand le matin du Grand Soir arrivera...")
  • High birthrates don't "keep" Quebecois --or anyone else -- dirt poor, but that canard has been around for so long that it is taken for truth.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,061
    " . . . they sound so much like the Communist revolutionaries they loathe"

    Ideology has certain qualities of a Mobius strip. Traditionalism is an artifact of modernity that way.
  • High birthrates don't "keep" Quebecois --or anyone else -- dirt poor


    Well, I think it is fine to admit that - depending on a man's/father's (or family's) job and income - high birthrates certainly can make one poor, to some degree another. The key is to a) first of all define what we really mean by "poor," and b) based on that definition, recognize the possibility that being poor is often not as bad as people make it out to be, and c) especially get it out of our heads that what we view as a comfortable life today can be dispensed with in order to live on less income. It may be a harder life than what maybe many of us (myself included, though my family of 7 kids was probably considered lower middle class) grew up with, but except in possibly the most extreme cases, I doubt it is any less truly happy, if one has a good mindset toward it and has a life truly permeated with the Catholic faith.

    I guess my overall point/observation is that Catholics today are probably much more wealthy today than in the 1950s, both in Quebec and most other places, and there sure isn't much - if anything at all - to show for that in terms of living/practicing/believing in the fullness of the Catholic faith. So in that context, being "poor" sounds like a pretty bad excuse to abandon their Catholic faith/lives. There is absolutely nothing in the whole Catholic tradition to suggest that being poor is a bad thing, and conversely, that being rich (or even simply "not poor") is any sort of virtue. If anything it would be quite the opposite.
  • Charles,

    When I was in college (I graduated 30 years ago) there was a performer called Fred Small who sang (during his concert on campus) about how children don't cause poverty. He couldn't be considered an orthodox Catholic. In fact, the song included the line "God bless all the Socialists", if I recall.

    People who have large families have to make the resources they have go further, but that doesn't mean that temporal poverty is a bad thing, or that it is causally linked to large families.

    I'll go a step further: in this country, "Catholics entered the mainstream" in the 1960s, contracepted themselves out of a future, and left the Church at the same time.
    Thanked by 2tomjaw CCooze
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,061
    It may surprise many to learn that, as a historical matter, family size self-regulation among the laboring classes in the Catholic world goes back to pre-Revolutionary France, and rather quickly spread to adjacent areas of the Catholic world (like right across the Rhine). It's not an artifact of the post-World War II era as such, but began around the time of the advent of the Industrial Age.
    Thanked by 1Elmar
  • francis
    Posts: 10,772
    family size self-regulation
    ...and one of the slipperier slopes that many take into eternal misfortune.

    Signed, FO
  • IdeK
    Posts: 87
    The problem is basically not, from what I heard from my colleague, that high birth rates made people poor.

    It's that those high birth rates were imposed by the clergy, often through public humiliation or such, without any regard to the possibilities of the families, including the health of the mother.

    And there is high birth rate and high birth rate. Actually my colleague's grandmother was publicly humiliated for not yet being pregnant of her 12th child one year after the birth of the eleventh. I hardly can see any contraceptive mentality in that, especially not after 11 children.

    Or maybe we should ask Tomjaw when his 10th child is due.
  • People who have large families have to make the resources they have go further, but that doesn't mean that temporal poverty is a bad thing, or that it is causally linked to large families.


    Yes, that is probably the right way to put it.

    I'll go a step further: in this country, "Catholics entered the mainstream" in the 1960s, contracepted themselves out of a future, and left the Church at the same time.


    Precisely.

    Actually my colleague's grandmother was publicly humiliated for not yet being pregnant of her 12th child one year after the birth of the eleventh. I hardly can see any contraceptive mentality in that, especially not after 11 children.


    If it was really like that, I think anyone should agree that is not right and should have been corrected. Still, looks like the other extreme (as succinctly put by CGZ) was certainly not the solution. Certainly it shouldn't have been (was not) necessary to reject actual, perennial Catholic teachings and liturgy to correct that unnecessary/inappropriate public interference.

    And to make it clear, I have no idea whether your colleague's grandmother followed suit/went along with the novelties of the 60's, so my comment is not at all geared toward her or any particular person. I am just saying that a holy, tradition-respecting papacy and clergy could have corrected any errors that may have been present in the 50s/60s without upending the whole of Catholicism, and so any blame is mostly on the papacy/clergy of the 60s and beyond. (Obviously recognizing that some priests/bishops, maybe many initially, did their best to continue to be faithful to the Catholic faith and tradition.) It is simply not possible - or, where it may be possible to some degree, it is absolutely wrong - to correct error with error.
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,764
    Having children does not make you poor, having children makes you rich. We have been instructed to go forth and multiply, we are expected to fill heaven with souls. By refusing to have children, we are not open to the culture of life. When we reject the culture of life our whole culture dies. This is seen clearly in every western country now.

    Too many people above are taking the exception, of a few priests that made misguided efforts to fight against the evil pest of a contraceptive mentality, which usually comes with the deadly sins of Greed and Envy. Temporal goods are effectively valueless to the Catholic in the long term and in the short term are to be used to help our neighbour. I am sure and know that all priests were not like this and the examples above are in some cases exaggerated. Of course if you believe that the Church began with Vatican II, everything beforehand must be bad.

    What makes people poor is themselves, they suffer from poverty of ambition, poverty of being open to love of God and neighbour. It is easy to be selfish, but difficult to be cheerful in adversity. Every Christmas we are shown an example of cheerfulness in adversity, did the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph complain endlessly that they did not have a soft bed? Did they wallow in misery blaming others? Who can say any of our family members among the last few generations experienced the poverty the Holy Family experienced on their journey to Bethlehem...

    Or maybe we should ask Tomjaw when his 10th child is due.
    c. 9 months after my wife finishes breast feeding?
    Thanked by 1CCooze
  • Elmar
    Posts: 505
    Sorry to join into this off-(or side-?)topic discussion
    Having children does not make you poor, having children makes you rich.
    I can only speak for people that I know a bit like my wife - child of a family of seven.
    As far as I know she remebers as a sign of poverty (in spite of having enough to eat and clothes, mainly from her elder siblings) that she wasn't able join many activities of her classmates (e.g. going to the swimming pool regularly in summer) because her father couldn't afford the entrance fees - and as a result had next to no friends outside her family...
    Instead she was 'rich' with three sisters in the same situation, being noisy in their shared room when she had to learn for high school, rather than contributing to the family income, plus (horribile dictu) three brothers.
    The 'alternative' free-time activities were devotions at church and rosary at home, which appear not to have been very inspiring to her, rather causing a life-long aversy against Marian devotions, but at least not turning her against the faith like it did for some of her siblings... rich life?
    c. 9 months after my wife finishes breast feeding?
    My wife breast-fed for ca. two years... like it was the norm in times of my grandmother, who grew up with eleven siblings - swimming int the dirty river, all leaving school for work at 14, that was their 'rich' life, which also included going to church thrice on Sundays.
    11 x (2 years + 9 months) = 30 years: 1st child at 17, last child at 47?
    No, combination of (normal, not 'modern' three-month) breastfeeding and pregnancy is possible & common - no excuse!
  • Having children does not make you poor, having children makes you rich. We have been instructed to go forth and multiply,

    Some theologians believe this was less a dictate and more a benediction. It is ultimately both, but I believe the latter sentiment deserves the emphasis.
    Thanked by 1Elmar
  • TCJ
    Posts: 985


    Our current society has a distinct lack of trust in God. I have already had people tell me they don't know how I can survive with the job I have and a wife who stays at home with the children. I survive by not trying to keep up with other people. Each child is a blessing and God will provide.

    On another aside, money management seems to be a skill many people do not possess these days.
    Thanked by 2tomjaw GregoryWeber
  • davido
    Posts: 921
    In the 19th and early twentieth centuries, an awful lot of working class families were in perpetual impoverishment due to conditions outside their control: unchecked capitalism, colonialism, empire building, economic collapse, weather patterns, wars, etc.

    Chronic 19th century alcoholism didn’t help, but as Charles notes above, being poor in today’s America is a far cry from being poor back then. As TCJ points out, today wise money management and reasonable expectations make it possible to prioritize openness to life.
    Doubtless today’s conditions did not prevail in Quebec.
    Thanked by 1Elmar
  • francis
    Posts: 10,772
    If you are married, everything else in life pales when you have children... they make you the richest person on earth and having money or not has nothing to do with the matter.
  • Elmar
    Posts: 505
    I survive by not trying to keep up with other people. Each child is a blessing and God will provide.
    If you are married, everything else in life pales when you have children... they make you the richest person on earth and having money or not has nothing to do with the matter.
    That's the part I easily agree with!
    Convincing your kids that it's secondary to have a room each for their own + a smartphone with data flatrate + inviting a bunch of other kids to your birthday party the style your classmates do + getting pocket money such that you can join your classmates going out in the weekend, that's the other thing... (certainly worth trying!)
  • Elmar,

    Because my wife is the oldest of a large-ish family, when her youngest sister and I spoke some time ago on the phone she said that she said she found it hard to go against her peer group. I replied that her big sister and I had been doing this so long that it was practically second nature. Don't let the tail wag the dog.
    Thanked by 2tomjaw Elmar
  • Elmar
    Posts: 505
    I believe it's also a question of having some king of 'alternative' peer group available.
    When I was young, a considerable fraction of my age group (across christians and non-christians) tended to oppose the 'materialistic consumption society'. This is rare among the young these days, even with 'Fridays for Future'... living your conviction is easier when you have at least a few like-minded people around. (increasingly off-topic)
  • Maureen
    Posts: 678
    Re: sex -- From the earliest times until sometime in the Early Modern period, it was normal in the West (as today in the East it is still normal) for married couples to abstain from sex during Lent, Advent, all fasting days, and on the night before Sunday, from midnight on. It was continued in Ireland until the early 1800's, as far as I can tell, until a fair amount of time after the Famine. Men and women were supposed to pray together instead, as was the custom in Judaism and as was advocated by St. Paul. Trent talks about it.

    I'm not sure that it was ever stopped, per se. It seems to have just been made not a matter taught about, or made mandatory on pain of sin. (Much like Friday fasting in our own day.)

    It's not clear to me why this was stopped. But logically, it would have served as a rest for women's bodies, as well as providing a kind of NFP. Possibly the stoppage of continence instruction was done to counter the "lots of sex" version of Protestantism? I don't know.

    But it was an ancient part of the faith to observe periodic continence within marriage. Therefore, it's not wrong for people to think that insistence on a high birth rate is weird, although obviously contraception is wrong.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,968
    The idea that if we just have more children, we will have more Catholics is flawed. Many of those kids grow up and leave the church anyway. They are not being given a good reason for staying.
  • Maureen
    Posts: 678
    Forgot to say -- That's why you weren't supposed to get married during Lent or Advent. Because you'd have to abstain from sex and not consummate the marriage, which was cruel unless it was going to be a Josephite marriage; or the wedding would be an occasion of sin, which was also cruel and wrong.

    Re: on pain of sin, it seems to have generally been considered a venial sin in the West, although some times and places were more strict about it. But if everybody was observing continence, it was probably easier to go with the crowd.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,061
    Well, there was a connection (based on ancient Greek medical ideas) in marital and dietary abstinence, because it was believed that eating flesh meat stirred the corporeal passions (one of layers of reasons for monastics to be vegetarian; and ascetic practices for penitential periods for non-clerics were drawn from monastic models, but with much local variation and non-uniformity of levels/modes of enforcement).
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,228
    They are not being given a good reason for staying.


    Wrong.

    Eternal salvation IS the first, best, and only reason for staying. But some don't care, or somehow believe that they'll be saved no matter what.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,968
    Not wrong. The church has been turned into a touchy-feely circus and is more of a social club than a place to worship. One can stay home, avoid all the political correctness, and not have to listen to bad music and sappy sermons. I used to not think so, but I believe the U.S. has turned into mission territory.
    Thanked by 1Elmar